Question

Can you please write a reflection paper (900 words) on geographies of population. You need to demonstrate a clear understanding of this concept and outline the main points of this concept. More importantly you have to evaluate critically how theories and practices of geography can influence our own lived experiences and observations about the world.

Answer 1

Geography's Ways of Looking at the World

A central tenet of geography is that "location matters" for understanding a wide variety of processes and phenomena. Geographers focus on "real world" relationships and dependencies among the phenomena and processes that give character to any location or place. Geographers also seek to understand relationships among places: for example, flows of peoples, goods, and ideas that reinforce differentiation or enhance similarities.

Example: Environmental-Societal Dynamics

At least since Malthus,¹ the relationship between population and its social and environmental resource base has been a central issue for science, and geography has long focused on the nature of that relationship, ranging from local and contemporary contexts to global and historic processes. Geographers are involved in both data collection and analysis to identify connections among changes in population, environment, and social responses. As another example, flows of materials, energy, and ideas across places have powerful impacts on human uses of the environment, and such impacts can mask basic understanding of contemporary environmental change.

Human impacts on the Earth have become sufficiently apparent and worrisome in the past few decades that the science of human-environment relationships has become a high priority concern across disciplinary and national lines.

The Distinctiveness of Place

Geographers are interested in human territoriality because the divisions of the Earth's surface reflect and shape the ways in which people think about the places where they live, as well as their decisions and actions.

Most studies of political preferences in modern states assume that differences are products of social cleavages along class, religious, or demographic lines. This assumption relegates place to a minor role in the political arena; to the extent that place-based identities and influences are considered at all, they are treated as anachronisms that have resisted the general trend toward the nationalization of political life. That is, where people live is thought to be of minor importance. Geographic research, however, has established the importance of "the fluid, constantly reworked local political cultures of particular places" demonstrating the continued importance of the experience of place in the political process.Bottom of Form Similarly, geographic work has highlighted the importance of place in the formation of cultural and social identities and experiences.

Geography's Relevance to Issues for Science and Society

Geographic research addressing integration in place has put the discipline at the frontier of experimentation with integration as a challenge for science. Geography's experience with integration in place also has been fruitful in providing insights to issues of interest to science at large, as illustrated by the following examples of complexity and nonlinearity and central tendency and variation. Geographic research on integration in place is also important to scientific understanding of important societal issues.

Complexity and Nonlinearity

Places are natural laboratories for the study of complexity because places exhibit a wide array of interlocking processes and activities, as well as interconnections with other places. Nonlinear growth and decline also are found locally in part because introduced processes or activities may not encounter well-developed moderating influences. Geographers have examined the complex and nonlinear systems of places to better understand how and why places change.

Central Tendency and Variation

Interactions in space and with nature tend to result in certain spatial and environmental regularities, leading to the study of expected outcomes, or central tendencies, across geography's domains of interest. Geographers have recognized, however, that observable geometries in the social and physical worlds are dynamic in their nature and multidimensional in their explanation.

Economic and Social Health

A geographic perspective recognizes that economic changes can create or exacerbate economic imbalances across places, whether or not the economic system overall is trending toward or away from equilibrium. A particular concern of geographers is the implications of economic change for different groups in society within a place, especially for groups distinguished by class, gender, and race. Related issues include the composition of the work force as rooted in social forces and potentials for cooperation versus conflict.

Environmental Change

Scientific concerns about environmental change have increased markedly in the past few decades. Geographers have made important contributions to the understanding of such changes through their research on human-induced climate change, ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity, and earth surface processes.

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Conflict and Cooperation

In any effort to understand how individuals and groups relate to one another, context is fundamental. Geography's concerns with the integration of phenomena in place and the positioning of one place with respect to others are key to an understanding of context; they focus attention on the importance of such matters as resources, land use, and the distribution and movements of peoples. Geographic work highlights the connections between social forces and the material and spatial circumstances in which they are embedded.

Human Health

One of the best illustrations of spatial interdependence can be found in geographic research addressing the spread of infectious diseases. The spread of such diseases is a highly spatial process that can often be understood and predicted by using spatial modeling techniques. Research by geographers on the spread of infectious diseases incorporates many of geography's perspectives related to location, synthesis, and scale.

Population and Resources

Perhaps no topic evokes more emotion in global change studies than the ultimate human causes of environmental change—the subject of an extended scholarly and public debate.

Environmental Change

The scale of operations plays an important role in deciphering connections among climatic systems. Many of the recent advances in research into global climate change have emphasized the global scale, and the connections among components of the global climate system are now much better understood than they were just a few years ago. From the standpoint of human experience, however, climate is much like politics: it is local.

Economic Health

The economic health of a locality, region, or nation depends on the interaction of processes that operate at many different scales—ranging from global capital flows to local labor markets. Geographers have long been interested in this interplay of global, regional, and local processes—for example, those between global economic forces and local social forces.